Let’s just rush in head first, shall we?
I don’t understand this. How do you get two fighting majors 3 seconds apart?
That is from last nights score sheet on NHL.com of the Rangers / Islanders smackdown. That doesn’t make much sense, does it? Why should I care? There are a lot of people, including myself when I am on the road, who rely on the score sheets to find out what happened in night to night action, such as those who travel or are out of market and can’t get a Center Ice package. Even though it is a small and, for many people, insignificant thing, these new score sheets SUCK!!!
If you haven’t seen the new style, here it is in two parts (what my screen capture can do):
If you are having a hard time reading that, I suggest you click on it, to make it bigger.
Note the 2nd period penalties. For some reason, they jump around in time a bit, getting back to the penalties at 8:11. A few look to be repeats. And look at Shanahan in overtime. How does he get a four minute double minor for cross checking at 2:17 and a 2 minute minor for cross checking less than 30 seconds later? I get what they are saying, but they just game Shanny 6 minutes in penalties. What did Hollweg do at 16:22 of the third? Did Rick DiPietro get a and Al Montoya get game misconduct penalties but no fighting majors (That has to piss them off).
Let’s look at the rest of the sheet:
They finally give you more info on the 5 on 3 and 4 on 3 situations. There is more information than before. Face-off percentage in various strengths is nice. But you know what they are leaving out?
WHO’S THE FREAKING GOALIE???
They are willing to put a slot in for who the standby refs are, but not for the goalie? In the old sheets, the goalie had an area that said how many minutes played, shots and goals against, including empty net times. Those are gone. Sure, you could go to the “Super Stats,” but that isn’t an excuse for leaving it off the main score sheet. And, if you are not a tabbed browser type of internet surfer, you have to switch back and forth between multiple screens to get a comprehensive look at the game.
Oh, and before anyone starts in about the NHL Real Time tracking, let me remind you that it’s in Beta. Serious Beta. As in, the game is in the first intermission. What does the Real Time screen show?
That’s pretty beta, and it’s not good enough. Sure, it’s the preseason, but we are talking about the NHL here, not some rinky-dink little beer league. The NHL, who praises their fans with being an internet savvy, digital age, mouse wielding bunch of nerds fans. And if the NFL or MLB did something like this that didn’t work, they would have fans all over them. I know people who rely exclusively on MLB.tv for keeping up with their teams, and if MLB screwed up stats and score sheets like this, there would be riots.
It’s get it together time. Season starts soon, NHL. You have some work to do.
(Side Note: In the interest of being fair, the Real Time screen is now working, starting with the second period. By NHL standards these days, two out of three is pretty good. Not good enough, but pretty good.)
Feedsters: Lots of pictures and diagrams and stuff that looks cool. If you can’t see them, go to the blog. It will make more sense that way.